President Joe Biden and other Democrats reportedly took campaign contributions from Emadeddin Muntasser, a convicted felon in the United States accused of supporting “the cause of violent jihad,” after he was released from prison.
A report from the New York Post indicated that the 57-year-old and two of his associates were convicted in January 2008 of “conspiring to defraud the United States government, lying to the FBI and engaging in a scheme to conceal evidence.” The group’s charges came from operating an “Islamic charity that acted as a front to finance Islamic jihad abroad and lying about the organization in order to obtain tax-exemption status.”
The list of Democrats Muntasser has donated to ran for federal office, which started in 2018, according to Federal Election Commission records:
- In 2018, Muntasser donated $1,000 to Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA).
- Since 2018, he has donated $2,250, in three payments, to Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ).
- Since 2019, he donated $342.50, in multiple payments, to ActBlue.
- Last April, he donated $2,900, a one-time max donation, to Rana Abdelhamid, who was looking to unseat Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)
- Last year, he donated $2,900, in two payments, to Muad Hrezi, who was looking to unseat Rep. John Larson (D-CT).
- Last year, he donated $250 to Biden during his presidential campaign.
Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic strategist in New York, told the Post, “Democrats can’t do anything but set themselves up for failure at this point,” noting that the situation is “unbelievable.”
“This shows a lack of judgment and what it will be portrayed as is they will do anything to get money for their campaigns. They will deal with anybody — even enemies of the nation. They lose the moral argument entirely,” Sheinkopf added.
The Post described Muntasser’s legal process and the charity Care International:
During years-long criminal proceedings that followed the convictions were briefly tossed — only to be later reinstated in 2011. Muntasser ended up serving five months in a Rhode Island prison and another five months of home confinement, six months of supervised release and paid a $10,000 fine.
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Muntasser transferred $120,000 from Care between 1993 and 1995 to Makhtab al-Khidamat, an organization co-founded by Bin Laden. He additionally traveled to Afghanistan in 1995 and met with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a U.S.-designated “global terrorist,” according to the sentencing memo.
The feds additionally said that “Muntasser served as director of the Boston branch of Al-Kifah Refugee Center,” in the early 1990s and that Care was a “successor” and “outgrowth” of the organization.
Muntasser, who now runs a Massachusetts-based real estate investment and development firm called Quitri III, which he listed as his employer for the majority of the donations, declined to provide a comment to the Post.
Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter.